


no porch light on to pull me home

by encroix



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-27
Updated: 2013-07-27
Packaged: 2017-12-21 11:52:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/900000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/encroix/pseuds/encroix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raleigh finds himself a home after the war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	no porch light on to pull me home

Raleigh's about another invasive question away from throwing a punch. From the opposite side of the wall, he can feel Mako's forced calm ripple through like a gentle wave in a pond; _in out in out_ comes the mantra, deep focus on her breathing, on the feeling of everything expanding and contracting.

The scientist in front of him - blonde, British, drumming her pen against her clipboard - crosses and uncrosses her legs. 

"Are we done here?" he asks, slouching even deeper against the chair.

"No, Ranger," she replies, her accent stiff and crisp. As humorless as Hermann's. "We are not." A beat passes. "You understand the magnitude of what we're trying to accomplish here?"

He thinks about thumbing his nose, feels Mako's fingers on his arm. _Control_ , she whisper-sings, _Otherwise you'll always be under the mercy of something._

"No," he says. "I don't."

"There are very few Jaeger pilots left in the world," she answers. "And very few with surviving co-pilots. The fact that you and Miss Mori remain _intact_ makes you prime candidates - in fact, the _only_ candidates - for study. The ramifications of the drift, the supposed sentient capabilities of the Jaegers -- don't you understand how important this data could be?"

Scientists. Just like Newt. Get fixated on something badly enough and everything becomes a stepping stone on the road to finding an answer. No matter the cost. No matter what the risk. It's dangerous, and sometimes, reckless and stupid, and while he's done his fair share of dumb shit, it doesn't change the fact that he's been coming to these appointments once or twice a week for two months now, and they've barely done anything but hook him up to machines and talk.

He's bored, he's frustrated, and he doesn't get the point of all this.

 _They're testing us_ , Mako answers in his head, and he shakes his head.

"Just let me know when we're wrapping this little session up," he says, crossing his arms over his chest.

"You are required to be here," the scientist answers. "You realize you can't officially be declared ready for active duty until you receive my sign-off?"

"Then get to it," he says. "Sign me off."

They set more electrodes on the temples of his head, hook him up to some kind of IV. His veins look even more a mess than usual, his forearm bruised mottled greens, yellows, and blues.

"We are asking Miss Mori a question in the other room in a minute. When I signal, I want you to speak the first words that come into your head."

(Across the wall, Mako's laughter is ringing loud as church bells through empty city squares, and the question is about him, the questions are always about him --

 _how did you feel when you were first acquainted_ )

The scientist leans forward on her knees, looks directly into his eyes. "Mr. Becket? Your answer?"

He grins, shoves his hands in his pockets. "Fine," he says. 

The scientist huffs, murmurs a command to the graduate student overseeing the recording equipment. "Stay with him for a moment, I'm going to check on Linh and Miss Mori."

When she disappears, the graduate student wheels around on the stool to face him. "Is it true?" she asks, grinning widely, "What OK! says about you and her?"

(Across the wall, he can hear Mako's groan.)

Fuck this. He rolls his eyes, huffs an exaggerated sigh. "No," he says. "It's not."

The student smiles, scribbles on the corner of her page and tears it off. Hands it to him. "Then, you should, you know, call me. If you want."

He bristles with Mako's irritation, but flashes a grin at her all the same. Pockets the number.

-

That's how their homecoming goes for a while. Nothing glamorous. No parades. No ticker tape. No confetti. There's endless news broadcasts repeating the same footage of Cherno Alpha and Crimson Typhoon falling in the bay, endless news broadcasts speculating on the future of the Jaeger program, endless repeating footage of Herc standing in a stiff suit at a podium, reading off the driest, dullest military report in history.

There's Newt and Hermann, giving reports on the future of scientific exploration into kaiju parts. There's other scientists too, talking about the drift, speaking about the neurophysiological potential (whatever that means), talking about him and Mako as if they were lab rats rather than people.

And he doesn't even get to see her.

They've been confined to their separate hospital rooms, on bed rest and IV for dehydration, and him? His head still aches from piloting the Jaeger alone for those brief seconds in the breach, and there's nothing more the scientists love than that. Want to pick him apart with questions, want to interrogate him every second of every day.

The best parts of the day are when they get to eat together. Or when Herc brings Max along to sit and talk to him about what's happening at the base.

Tendo visits once, brings his wife, grins and claps his shoulder through the whole thing. But they're all on eggshells. The Jaeger program is pretty much bust at this point, and who knows what he's going to do after? Who knows what any of them are going to do?

-

Turns out Herc's report at least gets them all space at the HK Shatterdome for a while. Once they're released, they get the chance to move back into their bunks. Get to see everything shut down, taken apart, and prepared for being a waystation for kaiju research and surveillance.

He tours the facility the minute he gets there, catches the hulking empty hangars and daydreams about Gipsy Danger again, about seeing her as good as new, about the sparks from the torches as they fixed her up, opened her up, showing her insides.

He misses her. 

There's an article one of the scientists published about it. How there were always stories in the academy about Jaegers that moved even when they were without pilots, the way they sometimes mirrored the movements of their pilots in sleep. He thinks about Gipsy Danger, thinks about the homes he never got the chance to have, the places he always thought of as stops rather than permanent places to settle.

And Hong Kong? It's a port city. He could leave if he wanted to. (And does he want to?)

Mako finds him sitting in the hangar, watching the small carts go back and forth loaded with deconstructed pieces of metal, large sheets of scrap, and other tools fished from the old workshops. Most of the crew have left while he was in the infirmary, so the whole place rings with emptiness and quiet.

She doesn't say anything when she sees him. Just sets her hand on top of his, waits for him to look at her. The comfort - the empathy - rolls off of her in waves, and he can see through her eyes, can see them putting Gipsy together for the first time, can see them restoring her from whatever graveyard he left her in. (Alaska.

Always Alaska.)

He grits his teeth, and she winces.

"Things will be different now," she says.

"Are you going to stay in Hong Kong?" he asks.

"For a while," she says.

He shakes his head. "The Jaeger program…" Waste is the wrong word for it. Such a big part of their lives, of the world, and now, to be reduced to nothing but scrap metal and empty space.

Supposes that's just part of the package. Humanity always finds a way, always ends up sticking it out somehow, even in the shittest places of the shit, but leave it when things are good, and they'll go back to everything, same as always. Unpack, dismantle --

Her fingers curl around his, give them a reassuring squeeze.

The question he doesn't ask -- 

She turns to look at him. "Together," she says, and her eyelashes cast a light shadow against her cheek.

-

Herc says, "We're just waiting on the news about the funding. The science is maybe enough to scrape us something together. Fucking hope so, anyway."

Most of the base has left, except the three of them and Tendo. And even Tendo's been commuting in from a new place he's gotten in the city proper.

The mess is huge, and most of the tables have been scuttled. Just the three of them now, eating small dishes of rations in the quiet. The silverware is loud against the metal trays, and in the corner of the room, Max sniffs as he starts lapping away at his water dish.

"And you two? Thought about?"

Raleigh peers down at the wet clod of congealed spinach on his tray. Pokes at it with the tines of his fork. 

"We got more 'an enough people sticking around to help start out this whole research tack if you're thinking of leaving."

Mako looks down at her food, silent, and he can hear the strain of her loyalty and ambition. Looks up and speaks with her voice. "As long as you need us, we'll be here."

Her smile is small.

Herc looks back at Max, purses his mouth. "'ppreciate that."

-

The base becomes a ghost town. (How can three people keep anything alive?) And they make up for it by trying to be alone as little as possible.

For the two of them, it becomes something else. Trying to find a Jaeger rhythm outside of it. Trying to carve new places into each other and never leave. She spends most nights in his room now, in his bunk. Not even doing anything other than sleeping together. Nothing other than touching. Than feeling like limbs from the same body.

It becomes a riddle, a maze. It becomes inescapable. He can't fall asleep without the rhythm of her warm breath against his ear, without the way she twists in her sleep and burrows her head against his shoulder, without the noise of her abrupt bursts of mumbled Japanese words, half-finished and slurred, in the middle of the night. Hell, he's never been one to sleep through the night anyway -- not really, not since -- and in the middle of the night, at 0300, 0400, when his eyes can just barely make out the curve of her lips in the dark, when he can watch her and not feel her feeling him, when he can keep her to himself and watch her at peace, there's always a solid warmth that washes through him that he thinks could be something.

(The word, he's afraid to say. You say things like that and all of a sudden you have something to be taken away.

He knows. He remembers.)

And this is where Yancy'd lean back against the bedframe of the bunk and yank on his dogtags _hard_ and laugh. _kid_ , he'd say, _you really do got it bad this time, don't you?_ or maybe he'd just rub a hand over his eyes and tell him to go back to bed. You never knew with Yancy.

(In the morning, when she jostles him awake to clean up and head to the mess for breakfast, she'll make an errant comment. _you really have to sleep through the night_ , she'll say, with a concerned wrinkle of the forehead. _you shouldn't keep going like this._

And he'll be just tired enough to let the facade drop. Just tired enough to think _i could keep going like this with you forever_.

What can he say?

And she'll smile - or he'll feel her smile - and tug her boots on and throw the door open, ready to greet the day. Her determination as bright as any sunburst through an open window.)

-

She knows before he does. (And this is where you say _of course_ because you have the whole picture; and this is where you don't understand the confusion of having two people inside your head [or three, or four] because that's what he lives with, that's what she lives with, and how to know and not know at the same time is both an impossibility and what happens; the way he loves her and doesn't know it, doesn't have language for it, the way she loves him and knows it and can't say it, the way they dream and let dreams become language all on its own, the way dreams can't stand in for reality but become reality, the way reality is only memory and the past buoyed in grief and pain --

this is where you say _of course_ because you know him and you know her, and what they know is too much and not enough of each other, so when they miss the clues, they miss it, or they choose to miss it, or they ignore what it means.)

This is how it happens: they are in the middle of the hangar, where they eat their meals when Herc is busying with administration and bureaucracy, or on flights to and from Sydney, or flights to and from Japan, she catches a glimpse of something in his head. It's snowing in Alaska, or it was six years ago, and the snow is cold and sharp against his skin like little shards of glass, and he thought then how fitting, and then it is snowing elsewhere -

It is snowing in the Jaeger's footsteps and he is falling and -- _a jaeger demands_ two _pilots_ , the academy instructor was saying, _and the only recorded case on record of any pilot surviving a solo flight was marshal stacker pentecost, but the cost is considered too incredible for any single ranger. under no circumstances…_ but he had crossed an ocean and waded into shallow waters, where the grief was finally enough to drive him through the ice into freezing and numbness and stillness. 

Screaming metal, breaking ice.

She winces, and he grabs her hand. It is too much to be inside his head. It is too much to be inside anyone's sometimes; when she turns to look at him, her eyes are beginning to tear, but her strength feeds his own, her strength demands that she not cry in front of him, that this is a moment where he can take from her anything he needs to in order to stand.

"I will not let you fall," she says.

And in his head, _falling is easy. anyone can fall._

"I _won't_ ," she repeats, dropping her head to his shoulder. Wrapping her arm around his waist. 

And what if there isn't a choice? What if -

She meets his gaze, her hand tightening on his, and she knows. Knows the image he is thinking of, but hasn't quite collected yet because she is all sureness and patience and knowledge, and he's antsy, he's impatient and reckless and cocksure, and one of them has solved the riddle (so he has the answer but what good is the answer if you don't have the way to it? what good is an answer you can't decipher?) but it isn't him.

Was never going to be him.

(He dreams of a dock that night. Sees it crisp and in the coldest, palest blue he'd thought of - the water is out at the edge and he can hear it lapping up against the piles. The edge of it leading off into the fog. Short or long, he can't see. Just stands on the edge of it with his hands in his pockets, peering out at the sea.

The image of Mako flickers once, twice, before she appears beside him. Solid. Wrapping her arms around him.

 _you know_ , Mako whispers against the shell of his ear. And does he? Does he know? Or is it just her faith that he knows things the way she does? Her faith that he is just as capable as she is?

Fifty-one drops on the sim, that's something, isn't it?)

-

In the morning, he wakes and she is wrapped around him, her legs tangled with his, her head resting on his chest, her eyes open and wide, just _watching_ him and he thinks a question and she nods.

_this is the first time you've slept through the night._

And he looks at her, and now he figures it out, now the switches are clicking in his head, and he hears the echo of footsteps, and wants to stay. Wants to tell her that he will follow her anywhere. Wants to tell her that he chooses her for his home, that he would build walls, cathedrals, for her, in her name. None of it comes.

She smiles, but there are tears in her eyes.

She's figured it out, and he? He moves and the sheets shift over his shins and pull up over her ankles, and he leans back against the pillow and lets her rest her head on his chest. Hears her hear his heartbeat. Hears his own heartbeat in her head.

_Alaska._

Rings as a bell clear in his head.

-

He hates Alaska. Has ever since his parents died. But he can't shake the fact that it _built_ him somehow, that in that godforsaken state of snow and ice, there are pieces of him lying like shrapnel in the ice. Calling to him, trying to tell him who he is now. 

There's no more Jaeger program, no more Jaeger pilots. So what does that make him? Can you still be a washout if there's no program to be washed out of? And what happens now? And what does he call himself? Crumpled among his bag are other things, of course, that no longer matter - the shirts and badges he had that listed Gipsy Danger, that listed how many kills, how many fights - and now what does he do with it? Where does it take him -- no, that's the wrong question, where does he take it?

Mako would know. Mako already knows. Carries herself with the same rigid control, the same iron spine he saw when the Marshal was still walking the halls. Has avenged her parents, has known where she fits the entire time. And now the war is over, and she can move back into it like no time passed. Like she has been living a regular life the entire time. And what about him?

There are no walls to build now; there are no wars to fight; he had a brother, the brother died; he had parents, the parents died; he has scars; he has residual neuropathy on his left side; he has too many memories and too many voices floating in his head and he'll never know that thing that Yancy wanted to tell him. So where can he find the parts of him that are supposed to be truer than the other parts? The war has ended, so now what can he do? Become a farmer? Return to Alaska or the California coast and… do what? Teach? Train other military recruits?

Like he has any knowledge; like he could lead anyone.

Even Herc -- 

He's surrounded by iron giants on all sides, and didn't anyone ever notice? Hasn't anyone ever known that all he was was this? A washed up recruit with a swagger in his step and a mouth too big for his frame? A little kid hiding behind a brother and throwing punches?

And what now?

-

He packs a bag. 

She comes into his bunk in the middle of it, watches him from the corner. Knew before he did, and swimming in the air between them, he can feel her sadness. A slow sadness that curls across his shoulder like a cat settling itself in someone's lap, and tinting everything blue.

He looks to her, and she does not look away. He looks to her, and she stands with her back straight, her feet shoulder-width apart, her hands clasped neatly in front of her.

"Have you thought about where you would go?" she asks, and her voice is still as a lake. No tremor, no hint of emotion except everything that's screaming itself in his head right now.

She already knows; he knows that. But saying it… "Alaska."

She hums, and it sticks in her throat. Sounds like a sob in his head.

There is no departure date; there is no schedule, no itinerary. He doesn't fly like that. Never has. Never will (fly) again. "What about you?" he says, and he stops packing. Turns and sits on the edge of the bed with his stance matching hers.

 _you could do so much_ , he thinks, and she closes her eyes. Weariness, sinking into her bones with every second. _you don't need me._

And when her eyes open, there's sharpness in every glance.

But she doesn't say it. Breathes it, thinks it, draws it against his skin in little barbs, but she doesn't say it. She is stronger than he is. Always has been.

"Stay here and help Marshal Hansen with the preparations."

"The science teams?"

"Yes," she says. "And then…"

"There's no country that wouldn't want to have you on their side," he says, and the smile slips out unintentionally. He looks at her, and feels awed, like the first time he saw Gipsy Danger.

She flushes at the thought. 

"You will let me know? When…?"

He nods, feels the drift ache along his temples. Feels her absence as she nods and excuses herself, as she moves out into the hallway, as she places distance between them - mental, emotional, physical - until he cannot hear her at all, and wishes he could.

Wishes he could still. 

There's an old story about strength the Marshal used to tell. There's an old story about how in the old Pacific, the choice was always death before dishonor; the choice was always strength in the face of hardship. He can see her just as clearly living then as he can now. 

Wishes he had her strength; instead, there is only her voice in his head. Just as steady, just as sure. Telling him nothing.

-

He goes to Alaska. A pouring, warm humid rain in Hong Kong the day he leaves and he thinks of another. Hears helicopter rotors in his head, and finds he can't shake the noise out.

He goes, and joins the ice fisherman. In the deep woods with their cabins and the fucking ghost of the cold. (He hates the cold. Hates Alaska, too. But hadn't he always come here, after? Didn't he always come here and discover something? Some old part of him? Some new? 

He lost himself here, so maybe he will find himself here in bits and pieces and shrapnel. Old things to shove inside his blood to remember.)

He dreams of Mako. Hears her in his head, sees her in the corners of his cabin, wearing his sweaters. 

(The goodbye that never happened: she walks out into the hangar with him, the wheels of his luggage the loudest noise in the entire space. Herc is there, also, to see him off once before getting back to business and forgetting that things like the death of his son have happened, forgetting that time must march on without recognizing how loss stops everything in its tracks.

She has her arms crossed over his chest, and he sees himself in the posture, but her expression is all flat. Neutral. Mako through and through.

He wraps his arms around her and leans down and kisses her forehead, her eyelids, the tip of her nose, the corners of her mouth. Her lips are cool as freshwater straight from the lake, and they contour to his mouth; they push and pull, same as his, and open to him, and warm. He kisses her until he forgets why it is that he's leaving, until she grips the fabric of his shirt so tightly he can feel her nails scrape against the top of his chest, until Herc clears his throat and makes a comment about missing flights.)

And for their goodbyes, what was there? He had embraced her and wished he had stayed up long enough to watch her twist and talk in her sleep the way she had a hundred times before, feels the emptiness of her forced calm and the thoughts that run through her head of meeting him, and fighting with him, and fighting together, and winning, and their embrace on an escape pod, all salt-slicked and alive and giddy with it. 

He takes his dogtags off. Leaves them with her. "Isn't much," he'd said, as she stared down at them in her palm, "But they have Gipsy's name on 'em, and you deserve 'em. More than I do."

Her heart had _ached_ then and he had felt it, felt the tears drip wetly onto his cheeks and knew them to be hers, or his, or both of theirs. 

"Thank you," she said. 

"どういたしまして ," he returned, and her cheeks pinked.

His Japanese, still as bad as ever, but speaking with her voice. With the multitudes of her tones and colors.

She watches him leave, and he watches himself leave through her eyes, and there is a pull of sadness like a tide, like the kind they warn you about, the kind that drowns you before you realize its power.

-

He writes her a letter. Starts off in English, ends in bad kanji.

There are no stories to tell her that she doesn't already know so he writes about the food. Writes about the other men. Leaves entire lines blank, free for the spaces where he would write how much he misses her but can't bring himself to put to paper.

After all, putting it to paper makes it even more real. Draws it out of the drift and into real life.

-

The fishing only lasts so long. (He hates the motherfucking cold so much.) 

He finds his way to Sydney. New Sydney. Rebuilding itself on the fringes of kaiju blue. Still trying to excavate all the bone fragments out of its land. 

He gets a job cleaning the shoreline. Comes home every night covered in the shit he helped leave behind, washes it off, and starts all over. It's therapeutic in its own way, seeing the faded blue rinse off in the decontamination showers, but it still doesn't reach him the way piloting did. And maybe it isn't fair of him to ask for that (don't people live their lives without that kind of joy? Didn't his parents?) but he's still searching. A hunter, even now. 

Down the block from his barely livable apartment, there's an old boxing studio. The mats are chewed up beyond all hell, and the windows are dirtied, but two or three old men sit outside every morning and read the newspaper so he figures it's worth a shot.

Inside, the punching bags are filled with sand - some of them holding up better than others - but he wraps his hands and strips off his shirt and loses himself to his body. It's startling, how much he misses this. In a Jaeger, everything is in your head and your body is your head and there is no escape; but here, he can feel everything ripple along his body with no answer in his head, he can feel the muscles tense and relax, can feel the strain as he attacks the bag, the answering coarse kiss of the bag against his wrapped knuckles.

Mako's resolve curls inside him; her resentment, too, and her rage. Everything unleashed at a sandbag that doesn't speak, whose suspending rope creaks with every action as he bobs and weaves, ducks and tries to remember how to stay light on his toes.

The old man watches from the corner. Makes a correcting comment. He corrects, keeps going. (Somewhere, Mako smiles.)

-

He writes to her, he keeps rocks from the shoreline that he thinks he'll give her someday, that he thinks she'd enjoy, he spends his free hours in the gym remembering how his body speaks to him, how his body tells him things, the secrets it used to carry. He wonders if Mako wakes up and feels the soreness of his muscles echo along her own. He wonders if she can still hear parts of his thoughts.

(They dream together once. Or: she is in his dream.

They're back at the Shatterdome in Hong Kong, and everyone has gone and the hangar is empty but there is Gipsy Danger, taller than life, still bright and polished, still new. Her meal tray is emptied but she keeps picking food off of his, and her smile is bright, and around them, on loudspeakers, comes her voice:

_her heart_

He leans in close, presses his forehead to hers. Hears the rattle of her breath inside her chest, hears the tension settle in her stomach, hears how nervous she is. He wants to tell her that she has nothing to be nervous about, that she has nothing to fear from him, that there is only the enormity of everything he feels and how it makes him feel like Jaeger-size, like he could walk off the face of the earth and find that she had buoyed him up in the air, the same as she does everywhere else.

_when was the last time_

Her mouth trembles beneath his for a moment, and he closes the distance and chooses not to think about it. Feels the giddiness run straight from him to her, or her to him - he can't decide which makes more sense, or which is the more accurate description - and smiles with it. Smiles into the kiss, against her mouth, into her skin. Can't stop smiling. Can't stop kissing her. 

The kiss goes on. Drags, slowly, softly, the way only good slow kisses can do where he can feel the movement of his lips against hers in infinite detail, where the chapped corners of hers drag softly across his and scratches him, where he never walked away and just did this with her for the rest of his life.

_you saw it?_

Gipsy's eyes light up, all bright with life and he hears the whir of the reactor in its core and thinks _no_ , thinks _that's not possible_

And Mako looks at him from beneath her lashes, and her nose bumps his, and her mouth is still against his and still smiling. 

_yes_ , she whispers. _it is possible. you are here._

He jerks awake and there is a cavern in his chest, a yawing absence that doesn't settle. He aches. His mind aches. And it is early, too early for this, but he crawls up and he gets dressed and he walks to the gym and he attacks sand until his knuckles feel sore and bruised and split.)

The ink bleeds on one of the letters. On all of them.

He folds the thin paper up and shoves them into envelopes. Sees them wrinkle and crease. Presses his thumb over the seals like a kiss.

-

Herc sees him for the first time in months and says, "Christ, you're in a state, aren't you?" 

He looks around. "Marshal?"

The man rankles at the term and struts around the small apartment. "What the hell are you doing living out in the middle of a biohazard zone?"

He shrugs on a jacket, and gets himself a glass of water. "Got to clean up the shit we left."

The question must be sitting on the tip of his tongue because Herc just grunts, a frustrated noise, and stomps over to the window with his heavy boots. "She's left Hong Kong, you know."

The letters she wrote, she hadn't said that. The postmarks had changed though - he's picking up on _some_ new things now, and isn't that improvement? - and he'd started bundling them together by city. Maybe she'd become a traveling emissary. Or just been contracted for all the governments of the world. "Yeah," he says. 

"Christ," Herc repeats. "Look at the state of this shit." Like a father chastising a son.

"Have you seen her?" he says.

"Yeah," Herc says. "Course I have. She's been traveling a lot more than you have, I'll tell you that much."

He scrubs at his eyes. "Yeah." He's felt it too - the jet lag, the exhaustion - and he isn't prepared for it. The way his body jerks awake at odd hours of the night, attuned to hers, even now.

"What the hell are you doing here, Raleigh?" he asks.

"Trying to find my way out," he answers. And it's the same conversation he had with Stacker years ago, it's the same conversation he had sitting on a wall, growing cold and growing tired, except now, things are different. Or, they're meant to be.

Mako unfurls her fingers from a clenched fist somewhere, and he feels it. Feels the delicate touch of her hand along his arm. Tells him _control_ , tells him _in and out_. Nothing more, nothing less.

"Where is she now?"

Herc sighs, kicking at one of the crates that serves as his nightstand. "New Saigon," he says. "Then Korea, and Moscow, and back to Japan."

"I want to see her."

And is that an admission of guilt?

(They had a conversation once on a hangar, her feet kicking into the air, sharing music, sharing headspace, and he remembered telling her, or thinking about telling her, that mistakes were things to overcome, that holding yourself to the mistakes you made was holding yourself hostage, that she was better than that, capable of more than that.

She had replied _and you should forgive yourself_ , and it feels like something he has been trying to do for years, an old muscle that has healed improperly that won't work the same as he remembers it, but he is trying, he is trying, and doesn't that count for something?

 _if you have the shot, take it_ , right?)

"Then see her."

(He thinks about it.

Can't stop thinking about it. Spends an extra hour at the gym thinking about it, lets his hands think about it against the coarse burlap. 

The old man watches him from the corner. The kids come watch him, too. The ones that live in the bone slums, that have nowhere to go and nothing to do except search the coast for scraps of kaiju to try and sell. 

His hands ache. His hands beating against the burlap like a dying heart, forcing rhythm, forcing steadiness. 

One of the kids says, _how do you…?_

And he lifts his hands, sweat dripping from his forehead to the floor. "You want to?" he asks. "Come here."

The little girl is taller than Mako at her age, thinner, a little scrappier. He wraps her hands carefully, leads her to the punching bag. Teaches her a jab, a cross, an uppercut. 

The sandbag sways. She hits it. Once. Twice. Grins at him, teeth missing and all, and he says _find the rhythm, feel it along your hands?_

 _not just hitting_ , she says, and he nods.

"Good," he says, as she ducks, mirroring him, and punches against the bag. The other kids watch. Take turns.

He's an hour late for his shift.)

-

He calls Herc, forgets about the time difference, calls him just as the sun is beginning to peak in the sky. 

"What the hell do you want?" Herc growls into the phone, and he sees Yancy out of the corner of his eye, still wiping the sleep from his eyes.

"Where is she?"

"Tokyo," he says before disconnecting the line.

(His flight is all turbulence and connects in Shanghai, and he falls asleep and nearly misses the transfer but his body _hums_ , is desperate to see her, to be in the same room with her, to feel her thoughts along his mind with his own. He can barely keep still the entire flight, and the dirty look that guy sitting next to him gives him barely registers.

All turbulence and it feels like a Conn-Pod dropping into place, feels like he's returning to the flight again, like he'll be able to move and be thunderous, like every thought he has is connected to something greater. Connected to her. Connected to a thundering machine.

The whir of the turbines sounds too much like Gipsy's heart when he's on the edge of falling asleep, and he mistakes it; hears Mako's laugh catch on the air; hears the sharp noise of her gasp the first time the Conn-Pod drops into place, the first time they drift.

The first time he'd ever seen inside her head and awed at its magnitude, its strength. Like seeing canyons for the first time, and knowing the only thing that had carved it was something as soft and steady as a river.)

-

He forgets to get her address from Herc, spends a day getting lost in the city. Trying to find her heartbeat in a mass of heartbeats.

Hears her voice on the wind, sees her posture, her sharp black pantsuit, her hair clipped neatly behind her ears, her commanding presence at a lectern. Does she teach now? Does she consult?

He sees her in his head as he always saw her, a hero in a flight suit, her helmet shining in the dim light, her eyes sharp and attentive, looking forward into the black.

(He gets lost. Calls Herc. Finds her address.

Takes the wrong train.

Takes the wrong train twice.)

-

It rains on the way over. A gray sky, a light drizzle that reminds him of a family vacation to Vancouver once. Or was it a military trip to London? He can't recall, can't pick out the differences, except it's raining and he's in her apartment building and the rain is still dripping off of him, one drop sliding from the tip of his nose to fall on his upper lip, and -- 

does he knock? Should he ring the doorbell? Which is less presumptive? Which is less --

he's been inside her head and this should be easier, this should hurt less, and how does he -- lifts his hand, drops it; lifts his hand, drops it; sets his finger on the buzzer but does not press. 

And what if she's gone for the day? Left for another trip or gone to bed? Is this jet lag that buzzes around his brain?

…and what -- 

Did the drift feel like this? No, _it was silence_ , his words echoing back. Don't chase, let the drift come to you. 

…and now -- 

 

She opens the door. Presses her hand to her mouth. Says nothing, but thinks _i felt you, i felt you_. 

He closes the distance first. Wraps her in his arms, thinks to kiss her on the crown of the head but misses, falls short, finds her mouth instead, and does not curse the mistake. _See, mistakes are good, mistakes are finding new ways to better answers_ , and she smiles against his mouth and there is caution there, too, edged on the tip of her thoughts, but it is enough to be holding her and it is enough to feel her mouth against his, and his luggage is leaning against the back wall of the hallway.

"Come inside," she says, pulling away, breathless and half-laughing. 

He grabs his bag, slings it over his shoulder, follows her into the apartment.

(In the light, he sees the dogtags around her neck - two sets.

_you wear them?_

She looks up, pressing her lips together and looking blank. "Of course," she answers. "You gave them to me."

 _a part of you_ , her mind elaborates, her mind says, the shadow of her tracing shapes on his arm, desperate to touch, _with me, wherever i go_.

He drops the bag, crosses to her, knocking his shoulder against hers in his impatience to kiss her, to feel her body. She catches on the corner of one of the dining room chairs, loses her footing.

They fall to the floor in a rumble of laughter and knocking limbs, and isn't it easy?

To fall?

Isn't it easy?)

-

He tells her about the kids in Sydney. She grins through the entire story, fidgets with his hair, can't stop touching him, can't stop trailing her hands across the bare skin of his arm.

"And what about you?" he asks, but the answer makes itself clear. There are scores upon scores of awards on every spare space of table, hanging on the walls, commendations and awards and recognition staring back at him from every corner. No less than what she warranted, no less than what she deserved.

She traces her fingertips along the bare skin of the back of his neck. "Doing work here and there for the Japanese government. For Marshal Hansen."

"Have you gone back?" 

And he sees flashes of the Shatterdome. Newer metal, fewer people, a quieter space.

"Yes," she says, leaning her weight against him.

"And is it…?"

"Different," she says. "But still very much the same."

"And what about Herc?"

"He's a fixture," she says.

"And the Jaeger program?"

Her nose wrinkles. "Fighting," she answers. "Always fighting for a place."

He takes her hand. "And you?"

She looks up at him, brushes the line of her nose against his cheek. 

_will you stay?_

echoing loudly through the room, and he can hear nothing else. Is this home? Is this a place in the world he can carve for himself?

He dips his head to kiss her, and the word rings out _home home home_

And when she pulls away, he aches with her desire, feels the affection curl low in his chest. Drops his head against her shoulder and takes a shaky breath. 

-

This is not the happy ending. (Not yet.)

She flies back to Germany for a conference with a weary expression in her face ("I hate Europe," she grimaces, and he laughs in the early morning, traces tendrils of her hair across her face, kisses her, lies in bed with his bare legs against hers and kisses her clavicle and thinks about worship), and he returns to Sydney.

The kids miss him.

He picks up driftwood along the beach, feels the ragged splinters and coarse grain against the pad of his thumb.

He looks out across the expanse of bright blue ocean, and thinks about building. Building the wall? Building… 

Doing something with his hands. Making something. 

Her words float on the wind from Germany, half-asleep and exhausted. _houses and houses on a hill_

He looks out at the ocean and imagines her, miles and miles away, asleep. Thinks of wooden bridges, thinks of walking, walking nonstop until he finally reached her, until he could climb into bed with her and just fall asleep, breathing her in. 

-

Redbook does a one-year retrospective. The photographers root him out like pigs sniffing truffles. Track him and his stubble through the dark fringes of the edge of the Biohazard Zone, catch pictures of him with the slum kids. 

He thinks about punching one of the cameras. (Doesn't.

And how is that for restraint, Mako?)

There are interviews with Herc, a brief, condensed one with Mako - the journalist shows him the layout, chattering faster than he thought possible - _you were the last one we had to track down, the last alive pilot, obviously, and the people are very engaged in your story, you understand, came back from tragedy and retirement to get back in the suit and fight for the world and win, so we're very interested in getting_ your _side of the story for the piece, what do you think of the world governments' decision to shutter the jaeger programs, and what about your co-pilot? the photo of you on the escape pods was_ everywhere _and everyone started tracking your story, but you've been off the grid lately; do you still speak don't you and why not and you see, we have all these pictures we can put in the center inlay here for the feature_.

"And what did she tell you about this?"

The assistant flushes here. _not much, actually, but the people are more interested in_ you _anyway, you see, you're the hero of the piece, and we'll just do a piece on you, which she'll be part of; she's your co-pilot but you're still the piece that_ drives _the story, you know_.

"I'm not interested," he says, and he sees the curl of her smile - the slow smile, the one you have to fight to get out of her, the one that means she's proud of you, or absolutely content and happy - from across miles and miles. "She isn't _just_ my co-pilot. Without her, we would've been … lost."

The reporter snaps her fingers. "That's fantastic. Use that. That'll really sell the romance angle."

He grunts with distaste, nudges the camera lens out of his direction with an elbow. Smudges the glass for good measure. "Excuse me," he says, her inflection working its way in. "I have work to do."

(She calls him that night, and the connection is fuzzy, static breaking through when they least expect it. It's more comforting than he expects; reminds him of the drift, reminds him of being complete with her.

 _I saw what you said_ , she says.

_You bought an issue of that crap?_

_Took it from the doctor's office_ , she answers with an embarrassed giggle. _You look like you need a haircut._

His hand runs through his hair, and he grins. _Maybe_.

Static crackles through on the line and he whispers, _when are you coming back?_ and it sticks in his throat.

The line hisses; the line hums; her voice is quiet.

She says something; it disappears in the drift.

-

She flies to Sydney for business. Shows up at his apartment at half past four in the morning, drags him out of sleep so he can drag her into his bed. There's laughing, and there's the smell of sun in her hair and new freckles dotted over the bridge of her nose and her shoulder, and he can barely wait, nearly tears the clothes off of her so they can creep into his bed and lie there, so he can feel the bare skin of her back against his chest and press his hands to her ribcage and feel the ways in which they fit.

It nearly makes his knees buckle, the knowledge that he needs her so much. (And this is part of why he does nothing: to make her a vulnerability of his would be to strip away so much of the person she has fought to be, and he will never, he would never turn her into something that needed to be kept safely in velvet boxes or hidden away.

He never wants to be a thing that holds her back, no matter what.)

She laughs against his shoulder, and the backs of her knees are clammy and cool, despite the heat, and the juts of her hipbones are incredible, all of her _incredible_ that he slips his hands along her hips and holds her, tethers her to him.

His lips trace the shell of her ear. "Stay," he says, and she hisses out a laugh? A moan? Something in between, or maybe his name (he'd like to think it's his name, _god_ ), but he needs an answer, so he leans in, takes her earlobe between his teeth, flicks his tongue against it, and asks again.

 _what do you want?_ , his mind asks, his heart asks, he aches, and waits for a response. That's the thing about pilots; that's the thing about _him_ , not that he's brave but that he doesn't think, and when he doesn't think, he just feels; does the first thing his heart tells him to do.

She closes her eyes and he presses a kiss to her head.

"I want you to stay," she whispers. "Don't go."

He says, "For how long?"

And she nudges him in the ribs with her elbow. "Don't be stupid," she says. "As long as we have."

She tucks her knees up to her chest, and he clings to her the entire rest of the night.

-

 _What's your favorite city?_ , he asks. _Where you'd go, if you could go anywhere?_

It's embarrassing, really. One of those first date questions when you have nothing else to talk about but he _wants_ to know her answer. Sees the pictures coming through her head - peaked temples and orange-leafed trees and cobblestone and brick - knows the answer before she needs to say it. Lets her say it anyway.

"Kyoto," she answers. "It's the old and the new. Beginnings and ends, all in the same place."

He nods. Hums against her skin.

"I'd move there for you," he says. "With you, for you. Wherever you wanted."

She blushes, and he can feel the heat of it creep up her neck. Presses his lips to her pulse and feels its rapid beat.

"Raleigh," she says. "You don't…"

He skims his hands underneath her breasts, feels the firm muscle underneath. (A confession of love breaks through, murmured into the strands of her hair, the sinew of her neck.

Like Gipsy Danger, he thinks, the body is a vessel, carries so much power, but still, nothing compared to the strength of the heart, to the thing that drives it forward.)

-

She's still living in and out of various apartments across four or five time zones, but he moves into Japan. Finds a swath of land a ways out near the Biohazard Zone, but not far from New Kyoto. 

Spends his mornings sitting on the beach, feeling the grains of sand pass through the gaps of his fingers, watching the tide come in and out. Watching the shoreline.

He chews on the nail of his thumb, builds a house in his head. Sees it rise up, a whitewashed cottage with bay windows and indigo shutters; clapboard siding, and a gray roof; a small kitchenette and wooden floors, and room for the bed and bookshelves; light streaming through the windows in the morning to lighten her hair and wake her. 

He goes to buy plywood. Feels the grain between his hands. Counts the days until he can see her again.

-

It's a dumb idea. (You all know this; somewhere, Mako laughs at the notion of seeing him trip over a piece of plywood and fall on his ass.) But Raleigh's never been one to walk away from the notion of hard work and endless hours of tedious, manual labor as long as he finds a way to make something. To walk away from something that still manages to stand.

(He's good at this. He isn't good at many things.)

But construction makes sense to him. The way that people (sometimes) make sense to him. The way that he can look at a structure and tell how it's built, can tell how the cross-beams and framework build something greater than itself, can see how something so large can stand on something so simple, so small, as that. As pieces of wood.

He builds something. He builds something because of her. Builds something _for_ her.

More than that. He owns something, and all he wants to do is share it with the only person that knows him better than he knows himself, that has seen inside his head and stayed.

-

Her next visit in Japan, he tells her to make a stop. Take one of the new trains out towards the coast. 

The house is sturdy, if not sturdy-looking. Whitewashed, one-story, low to the ground, but solid. Windows stretching out to peer into the world. Adorned with plain curtains.

She looks at the house. The door. Hears his excitement and his thoughts, and waits anyway. "What?" 

He takes her hand, presses a small key into her palm.

"Whenever you want to find me."

She looks to the house, then to him. And again. "You…?"

He presses a kiss to her mouth, tucks his head against her neck. "You," he repeats.

She squeezes her palm around the key, feels its edge dig into the skin of her palm. 

"Whenever you need it."

She places her hands underneath his chin, pulls him up to look at her. Cries, and he can feel the tears well in his own eyes; pulls him forward to kiss him. Messy, open-mouthed kisses where her laughs slip out the sides and her tears drip onto his cheeks and everything is salt and the sweet of her skin.

Forever, he thinks. He could do this. He could belong to something like this.

-

Their first night together in the house, they don't leave the bed.

Oh, it starts out with her taking notes, reviewing her work and him pressing kisses to the bare parts of her body he can reach. Toying with her hair as she bats at him with her free hand. Tries to focus. (It doesn't work.

After all, his thoughts press on hers and everything he's focused on seems much, much more engaging than anything she's looking at.)

The windows are cracked open and the crickets are loud this time of year, the noise of the city distant and quiet, and he undresses her and explores her with his hands and his mouth and _prays_ \- his body and her body, together, in prayer, in song, in building something greater.

He watches the roll of her hips when she comes, steadies her with a hand on her stomach; watches as her eyes roll back in her head; hears her soft, concentrated grunts as she bites hard on her lip and tries to keep control.

They spend the night buried in each other's embrace, a single being, if only for moments, if only temporarily, just as in the jaeger, hearing each other's heartbeats and mistaking them for their own.

Outside, the world hums alive with life and sings hymns to them. Love and absolution, love and forgiveness, love --

-

In the early morning, she pads out of the house to find him, sitting only in his boxers on the beach, watching the tide.

His dogtags fall next to hers, clinking a soft rhythm as she walks. 

"What are you doing?" she asks.

His shirt is too large for her, and she swims in it; when he reaches for her hand, he skims fabric instead, his hand brushing along her thigh. 

She leans down, presses her mouth to the crown of his head, her hands skimming his shoulders.

"Come to bed," she says, and he looks out at the moon, descending on the top of the water.

 _come home_ , he hears, and she slips and turns back to the cottage. The surface of the water shines with light, and he stays a moment. Watches the world go still.

_come home_

And he does.


End file.
